Pennsylvania Workers’ Comp Lawyer for Slaughterhouse Workers
Pennsylvania has many beef, poultry, and pork production centers with hundreds of meat processing outfits. Slaughterhouse workers are subject to many injury risks on the job, and when injuries strike, Workers’ Compensation is supposed to help you.
However, employers and insurance carriers often try to stop cases from being filed in the first place, let alone blocking them when it comes to approval/denial of claims. In either case, our lawyers can help you get your claim filed correctly and fight to get it approved in court if the employer refuses coverage.
For your free case evaluation, call Cardamone Law’s Certified Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Lawyers at (267) 651-7945.
Can I File an Injury Lawsuit for Slaughterhouse Injuries?
If you work at a slaughterhouse and your injury was within the scope of your work, then you are supposed to use Workers’ Compensation instead of filing an injury lawsuit.
Workers’ Comp is known as an “exclusive remedy” for employees, and your right to sue your employer is usually blocked. Instead, you file with them for insurance coverage to pay for your work injury’s medical bills, a portion of lost wages, and specific loss benefits.
Workers’ Comp is a no-fault system, meaning that your employer covers you whether the accident was their fault, your fault, or someone else’s fault. So long as the injury was work-related and it was an accident, this should be your route to recovery.
You may have separate lawsuits against outside parties, but this is rare in this industry.
Common Workplace Accidents for Slaughterhouse Workers in Pennsylvania
Slaughterhouse work can be grueling. You may have to process many animals per hour, and the conditions can be cold from refrigeration, hot from summer weather, and wet from many sources. As such, dangers are all around you, with the following categories of injuries being quite common:
Injuries from Animals
If you work with dispatching animals, injuries can happen easily. Being on the wrong side of a steer or injuring yourself while trying to move or maneuver an animal is a common cause of accidents. You may even be trampled, potentially causing many injuries.
Machinery Injuries
Many injuries come from conveyors, lifts, saws, and other equipment. Slipping and getting your hand caught in a machine or even falling into dangerous equipment can leave you with potentially life-altering injuries.
Repetitive Stress Injuries
Many of the injuries sustained on the line in a slaughterhouse are from repetitive tasks. Lifting, carrying, moving, cutting – repeat motions like these can all put strain on your body and result in injuries over time.
Slippery Floors and Tools
Slaughterhouses often have to deal with slippery flooring, tools that get wet with use, and wet tables. These can cause you to fall, to slip with a knife or saw, or to have product/tools fall off the table and hit you. Falling and hitting your head on a table, slipping and cutting yourself, or even dropping a heavy side of beef onto your foot can cause serious injuries. While some of your protective equipment might help prevent this, injuries still happen.
Is My Employer Responsible for Injuries at a Slaughterhouse?
When working at a slaughterhouse, your employer is responsible for keeping conditions, tools, equipment, and work pacing safe. They should not be leaving you unsupervised, giving you more work than you can safely perform, or allowing safety conditions to slip.
Whether safety standards were lacking or not is likely not a concern for Workers’ Comp. Your employer is responsible for paying – through their insurer – for your injuries regardless of the cause.
This means that you do not have to prove OSHA violations or unsafe conditions before getting benefits under Workers’ Comp., but they certainly help your case.
What Benefits Do Slaughterhouse Workers Get Under Workers’ Comp?
Workers’ Compensation pays three major areas of benefits to injured workers. If your loved one died because of a work injury, your family can claim some of these benefits instead as death benefits, plus a burial/funeral payment.
Medical Benefits
Workers can get all medical care related to their work injury covered. This is supposed to be paid regardless of what work injury you face and should cover emergency treatment even if your injury is not disabling.
Lost Wages
If you begin to miss work because of your injury, you should get compensation for the lost wages you face. Most injury cases involve 2/3 of your wages being paid while you are unable to work. If you can work with partial disabilities, you get 2/3 of the difference in wages instead.
Total disability wages can last as long as you are disabled, while partial disability can be paid for up to 500 weeks, though they do not have to be consecutive.
Specific Loss
Specific loss benefits cover permanent injuries, lost hearing/vision, and serious facial scars. Each injury has a set payment scheme found in the Workers’ Comp Act.
There are no pain and suffering damages paid in Workers’ Comp claims, but these are additional benefits paid to reimburse you for your loss.
How Do I Know What My Case is Worth?
While you might be able to estimate some of the benefits in your case, you should never do so alone. Our Workers’ Comp lawyers for slaughterhouse workers can take a look at your specific case and calculate settlement values so that you do not settle for anything too low.
Wage-loss benefits are somewhat straightforward to calculate, given that they are typically 2/3 of your average wage before the injury. For some workers, this might be complex – e.g., for seasonal workers. If your wages are low enough, you might hit provisions raising your minimum compensation over 2/3.
Both medical bills and lost wages become harder to calculate when you consider ongoing benefits. You need medical experts and financial experts to help calculate how much longer you would be expected to work before the injury, whether you can return to work now, and what work capacity you have left.
This will all go into calculating your settlement value. For many, they will obviously never be able to work again, making wages easier to calculate. Even so, ongoing medical expenses might be hard to predict if the injury could worsen over time.
Call Our Pennsylvania Workers’ Comp Attorneys for Slaughterhouse Workers Today
If you were injured working at a slaughterhouse, call Cardamone Law’s Workers’ Comp lawyers for slaughterhouse workers today at (267) 651-7945.
